A Breath of Fresh Air
by Teobi
Summary: There's nothing worse than an overheated Howell. But can they keep their cool with Gilligan around?


_Well, I've watched some GI episodes now (LOVE IT!) and felt confident enough to try my hand at this. It's a one-shot, kind of like a small scene from an episode. Not affiliated to any particular one really- I hope it could work in any season. Reviews are most welcome! Thanks for reading!_

# # # #

Gilligan sat cross legged on the beach, peering into the palm of his hand. He'd been there for a while, and he was still there when Thurston Howell the Third appeared beside him and tapped him on the shoulder with a long, thin bamboo cane.

"There you are, Gilligan," the millionaire said with a none-too-discreetly disguised air of impatience. "And what, may I ask, are you doing?"

Gilligan looked up, squinting his blue eyes against the mid-morning sun. "Counting grains of sand," he replied cheerfully.

Howell's own eyes widened. "Surely you're not serious? Counting grains of sand? Why, it's almost unfathomable how many grains of sand there are here!" He swept his stick around in a dramatic arc.

"Oh, no, Mr. Howell, I'm not counting the whole beach, that would take too long, like a whole week, at least. No, I'm just counting these ones here in my hand."

Howell looked at the first mate's handful of sand. He shook his head resignedly. "My dear Gilligan," he started speaking slowly, as if to an idiot, "even in that small handful alone, there could be a hundred billion grains of saaaand."

"I'm up to one hundred and seven." Gilligan frowned and peered into his hand again. "Oh no, wait- I think I counted that one twice. Guess I'll have to start all over again. One...two..." he sat back, startled, as the tip of Howell's cane flipped his hand up and dispersed the pile of sand all over his jeans and shirt. "Mr. Howell! What did you do that for? Now I'll never find them all again!" he started scrabbling at his clothes in dismay.

"Gilligan, counting grains of sand is for poor people. It serves no purpose except to remind you of every second of time you've wasted on such a thankless task. Meanwhile..." Howell hooked his hand under Gilligan's elbow and pulled the gangly first mate to his feet, "...you are due to relieve Miss Grant's shift at any moment."

# # # #

In the clearing outside the Howell's luxury double hut, Ginger was sitting on the bamboo bicycle in her gold gown, wearing a theatrical pout and pedalling deliberately slowly. "This is no job for a Hollywood actress," she complained bitterly.

"I told you, my dear, pretend you're pedalling after Rock Hudson," Howell smirked.

"I did, but he was in a fast car and I lost him at the last set of lights," Ginger huffed. "Stupid bicycle. No-one rides bicycles in Hollywood."

"Luckily, Miss Grant, you're not_ in _Hollywood," Howell grinned.

"_Ohhh_!" Ginger wailed, unhappy at being reminded.

While this was going on, Gilligan ambled over to the hut and poked his head round the door. "Hey, Mrs. Howell! How's the air conditioning?"

Lovey Howell was lying in a bamboo lounger under a huge palmetto leaf that was rigged up against the wall and was flapping up and down in time to Ginger's unenthusiastic pedalling. "I think it needs turning up a notch, Gilligan," she said, fanning her fingers in front of her face. "It's still so dreadfully hot."

"Well, don't worry, Mrs. Howell, I'll see what I can do," the first mate grinned.

Ginger climbed off the bicycle and hobbled over to the table where Mary Ann was already sitting. The Kansas farm girl looked equally pained.

"Wait," said Gilligan, "I thought Mary Ann's shift came after Ginger's?"

"Oh, Gilligan, I'm still saddleburned from my last shift," Mary Ann complained. "There was a mosquito in the hut and I had to pedal twice as fast just to get rid of it."

Gilligan frowned and looked at Howell. "I hope I don't have to work a double shift, Mr. Howell," he said, sticking out his lower lip.

"Thurston!" came Lovey's anguished cry from within the hut. "I'm melting!"

"Ohh..." Howell bundled the first mate towards the bicycle. "Just start pedalling, Gilligan. We'll negotiate later."

Gilligan, still pouting, climbed aboard the bamboo bicycle contraption and started pumping the pedals furiously. Inside the hut, Lovey sighed loudly and theatrically.

"Aah! Gilligan, darling, that's marvellous!"

Thurston Howell grinned with delight. He tapped the furiously pedalling Gilligan twice on the shoulder and then thwacked him once on the rump with the bamboo cane. "Stirling work, dear boy," he crooned. "Believe me, there is nothing worse than an overheated Howell." With that, the Wizard of Wall Street disappeared inside the hut to enjoy the Gilligan powered air conditioning alongside his contented wife.

"Who do they think they are?" Ginger pouted harder, just to outdo Gilligan.

"Millionaires," Mary Ann sighed.

"It isn't fair. I Wish we could all afford air conditioning."

Just then, the Skipper and the Professor arrived, their arms laden with wood for the fire. When Jonas Grumby saw the Minnow's first mate pedalling away like a madman on the bamboo bicycle, he sighed heavily and turned to the perspiring Professor, who had the machete strapped to his waist. "Why do I get the feeling that my authority in this camp is being slowly eroded, day by day, bit by bit?" he asked plaintively.

"Because it is?" Roy Hinkley replied, arching one eyebrow.

"The Howells are slavedrivers," Ginger said, dropping her voice to a low, sultry tone as the Professor put down his load of firewood and approached the table.

"We were hoping they'd have given up on this silly idea by now," the Professor admitted.

"Gilligan," the Skipper said, watching his little buddy's legs spinning round and round on the pedals so fast they were almost a blur.

"Yes Skipper?" Gilligan didn't stop or pause for a second as he looked at his big buddy through eyes that were squinting with concentration.

"You don't have to pedal so hard," the Skipper sighed. "You're not going to make that silly 'air conditioning' work any faster."

"That's where you're wrong, Skipper," Gilligan replied. "There's nothing worse than an overheated Howell."

"And who told you that?" Skipper asked, patiently.

"Mr. Howell. He also said, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well."

The Skipper sighed again. "And what would _he_ know?"

"He said if I keep Mrs. Howell cool, he'll give me a raise."

The Skipper rolled his eyes not once, but twice. "Gilligan, he's not even paying you at all."

"Then he'll let me carry his golf clubs."

"But you already do that."

"Happiness is its own reward," Gilligan grinned, his legs going round and round and round.

The Skipper shook his head. He patted Gilligan's shoulder good naturedly. "You just carry on, little buddy," he smiled. Then he headed for the door of the hut and rapped sharply on the bamboo poles until a bored sounding Howell told him to enter.

"Mr. Howell," Jonas Grumby said, once he was inside and out of Gilligan's earshot. "Having 'air conditioning' is one thing, but exhausting my crew and everyone else is quite another. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to stop."

"And who said you were in chaaarge?" Howell asked, sipping on an elaborately decorated drink in an oversized bamboo tumbler.

"I did. I'm the Captain."

"Only at sea."

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, being shipwrecked means we're still all at sea," the Skipper replied, trying to stay calm. "And we need people to be fit for work, not covered in saddleburns and blisters from pedalling that silly leaf up and down all day."

"That 'silly leaf' is what's keeping us cool, Captain," Howell responded, exchanging a look with Lovey, who smiled sweetly up at the Skipper. "There's nothing worse than..."

"'An overheated Howell'," the Skipper finished for him. "Yes, I know. But what about an overheated _Gilligan_? He was supposed to be helping me collect firewood this morning!"

"Well, I found him down at the beach counting grains of saaaand," Howell responded in a bored tone. "He didn't look very busy to me."

"Counting grains of...?" the Skipper's shoulders slumped momentarily, then he composed himself again. "Mr. Howell, it doesn't matter what Gilligan was doing when you found him. The fact remains, he's my crew member and I'm the one in charge!"

Howell waved his hand dismissively. "Please! Captain, all you're doing is replacing all our lovely cool air with hot air."

"Yes, and not only that, you've been standing there with the door open the entire time!" added Lovey, petulantly.

The Skipper began to apologise and then did a double take. The door was only made of bamboo poles- there were huge gaps in between every one. However, on his way out he made a point of shutting the door. Loudly.

Gilligan was still pedalling hard. His face and neck were almost as red as his rugby shirt.

"Gilligan, stop pedalling," said the Skipper decisively. "I'll have no more of being ordered around by that obnoxious, big headed, overblown gas bag."

Gilligan carried on pedalling, although his gaze had shifted to the side of the hut where the strips of vine that ran through the hollow bamboo canes that hooked up around the pulleys and spindles that powered the palmetto leaf entered through the woven palm fronds and into the hut itself. His eyes narrowed.

"Gilligan, didn't I just tell you to stop pedalling?"

"Wait, Skipper, I thought I saw something." Gilligan held up one hand. He looked at the wall again. Something was moving on it. Something big and brown and fat and hairy with eight long, clambering legs. As he watched it closely, it climbed onto one of the bamboo canes and disappeared through the wall and into the hut. "It's a palmetto spider!" the first mate exclaimed. "Mrs. Howell hates them! I've got to stop it!"

With the pedal wheel still spinning fast, Gilligan tried to hop off the bicycle. Too late he realised that the loose shoelaces on his left sneaker had tied themselves around the pedal and he was stuck fast. Gilligan had quick reflexes, but only up to a point, and he could only keep his balance for so long. He hopped quickly onto his right foot, waved his skinny arms in the air, almost righted himself, and then crashed headlong through the wall of the Howell's hut with the entire bamboo bicycle attached to his left foot.

Lovey squealed as Gilligan upturned her bamboo lounger with her still in it and half the hut came down around their ears. After the first wall fell in the ceiling collapsed, and then the opposite wall went, and last but not least, the two side walls creaked and wavered and then sank outwards with a sigh in opposite directions.

Finally, Thurston Howell the Third let out a terrified yell as a huge, hairy palmetto spider came sailing out of the sky and landed in his drink.

In the middle of the mayhem, as the dust began to settle, Gilligan sat tugging at his laces, trying in vain to unhook them from the now broken bamboo bicycle. "Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Howell," he puffed. "Look out! There's a spider!"

Mrs. Howell leapt up from the floor. "There's also a cockroach!" she shrieked, clinging to her husband, who had already flung his spider cocktail across the room and was shaking and clutching his teddy to his chest in a barely controlled panic.

"Not to mention a Gilligan!" Jonas Grumby clapped the smiling Professor on the back and grinned with delight as the rest of the castaways sat wide eyed at the table, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle that was unfolding in front of them.

"Captain!" came Thurston Howell's deflated voice from across the clearing. "Please! Do something! You're the one in chaaarge!"

The Skipper grinned and waggled his fingers at the millionaire. "Only at sea, Mr. Howell," he chuckled heartily. "Only at sea!"

Thurston Howell hugged his teddy and his wife and pouted moodily at Gilligan, who had managed to untangle himself and was now clambering to his feet. Gilligan picked his hat up off the floor and jammed it back on his head, then he went over to Mr. Howell and began helpfully dusting him off. Howell flinched and furrowed his brow as he felt the touch of a mere minion upon his shoulders.

"Well, Mr. Howell, look at it this way," the first mate said, flicking cobwebs and dry leaves from the millionaire's rumpled Country Club blazer. "You don't have to worry about air conditioning any more. Not now that you've got all the fresh air you could ever possibly need!"


End file.
